Automotive Industry Prototyping Low-volume production
Accelerating Car Development
Automotive prototypes are essential in product design, cost control, production and sales, and quality inspection. When developing a new car, first make a prototype of the vehicle, test the appearance and structure, and see if your design is perfect! Prototype design can make timely corrections to some products that have been designed but are not perfect. After confirming that it is correct, proceed to mass production.
RpProto has 20 years of experience in car prototyping and is your reliable partner. We produce prototypes and small batches of pre-production or production parts for hundreds of well-known automobile brands worldwide. Provide customized solutions to enable rapid iteration of your new car development. We implement full-process quality control in the prototype manufacturing process. Ensure that all aspects of the company can operate efficiently and correctly.
Common Applications
- Headlights
- Dashboard
- Shell
- Bumper
- Interior parts
- Dash Components
- Engine Parts
- Engine Covers
- Air Filter Housings
Advantages of Automotive Prototype
Appearance design inspection
The designer’s ideas are reflected in shape, color, size, and material through the physical model produced. Provide a practical physical reference for more in-depth communication, evaluation, modification, and improvement of the design plan, and test the rationality of the design plan.
Validate the structural design
The car prototype can verify whether the structural design meets the predetermined requirements, such as the reasonableness of the structure, the ease of installation, and the detailed handling of ergonomics.
Reduce development risks
Through the inspection of the car prototype, problems can be found and solved before the mold is opened to avoid problems in the mold opening process and to cause unnecessary losses.
Fast to Market
According to the characteristics of the rapid production of car prototypes, many companies will use car prototypes for product promotion and pre-sales before molds are developed to introduce new products to the market quickly.
Common Materials for Automotive Prototypes?
| Conventional Product Prototypes |
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Generally use ABS, which is easy to process, and the post-processing of the prototype is also beautiful. |
| Transparent Product Prototypes |
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Materials such as PMMA (acrylic), transparent ABS, and transparent PC can be used. Prototypes made of these materials have been polished to achieve extremely high transparency and achieve the same effect as real products. |
| High Temperature Resistant Products |
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The materials like Epoxy Resin, Bakelite, Black PC, PA (nylon) can be selected. Except for the black PC that can be bonded to the hand boards made of these four materials, the other three can not be bonded and need to be processed as a whole. |
| Wear-Eesistant Product Prototypes |
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POM or PA can be used. Prototypes made of these two materials can not be bonded and need to be processed as a whole. |
| High-Toughness Product Prototypes |
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PA or PP can be used. Prototypes made of these two materials can not be bonded and need to be processed as a whole. |
| Lightweight and Strong Product |
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Aluminum, all-purpose metal material, provides excellent strength-to-weight ratio and can be machined or 3D printed. |
Caces
Automotive panel
Material：PMMA
Process ： CNC Machining
Tolerance：± 0.1mm
Delivery period： 5 days
Wheel Rim
Material：PC
Process ： CNC Machining
Tolerance：± 0.1mm
Delivery period： 5 days
CNC machining car bumper prototype
Material: ABS
Advantages: Cost saving, Fast lead time, and low risk.
Description: This is a car bumper for sports cars. It is made of ABS. We can see that this car bumper is larger than ordinary cars and has a more complicated structure.
Processing:
1. Modeling and programming. Before CNC machining, we need to model and program.
2. Cutting the material and starting CNC its structure, including its appearance and internal structure.
3. After the CNC processing is completed, we need to glue them together and measure their size. There is a fixture to ensure that the size is good.
4. Polishing is required to make all surfaces smooth.
5. After finishing polishing, we will do primer painting
6. After the primer paint is dry, we can finish the finished painting on the surface
Then, the prototype of this car bumper was completed.
Generally, the processing technology of making auto parts prototypes depends on the size and structural complexity of the auto parts. If the structure is particularly complex, we can choose 3D printing to make it.
If you are making low-volume production of auto parts prototypes, you usually make a prototype first and use vacuum casting. Vacuum Casting processing is for a large number, and the accuracy of the product itself is not particularly demanding.